E-Commerce for All

Welcome to PRO-Webs “So You Want to be a Shop Owner” Series conclusion # 5 Got My Store in Development, Now What? If you are just stopping by the first time today then you may want to catch up on the previous Shopping Cart Development Guide posts in this series. To sum it up, we have been stepping through the development decisions, processes and shopping cart software options involved in building an online store.

So you want to be a Shop Owner Series Conclusion

By this point your new ecommerce store is in the final development stages and you will soon be able to add products and begin to sell your products. No doubt this is an exciting prospect, but the final development stages and adding your products and categories is by far the most crucial piece of any e-commerce store’s development.  The decisions you make now regarding the category structure, navigation and layout tweaking for your online store can easily make or break any shopping cart project’s success.

Lets get started with adding products and categories.  Whether you or a store development company is adding your products and categories to your store matters little… There are some extremely important decisions to be made in categorization and product grouping.  The biggest problem with this organizational stage of development is the “lack of forgiveness” for mistakes.  You see, once your category structure in laid out and indexed by the search engines, you really do NOT want to change the structure.  Not only do changes of this magnitude cause “flux” for your site’s search rank in Google, but MANY times changing a product category, name or group will cause the page’s url to change.  This can be VERY bad, especially on a large scale and can cause your site to be temporarily pulled from Google’s index or sandboxed.  This sandboxing period in which Google attempts to digest your content and determine if it is trusted can last a very long time. The longest sandboxing I have seen was 90 days.

About the sandbox: While in the sandbox, all or some, of your store’s pages will be pulled from Google’s index.  This “Sandbox effect” seems to be occurring less and less, but for new and low authority site’s the danger still exists. They are not only not search-able, but not in the index at all.  Large scale content and page changes can easily cause this and there is no clear way to remedy it.  The length of time in the sandbox is directly related to many factors within Google’s ranking algorithm.  I believe the most weighted ranking conditions are related to the site’s index score and TrustRank.  In a nutshell, does Google trust your site?

If you happen to get yourself sandboxed, again little can be done but wait.  However, you might build some strong, organic, one way links to the sandboxed pages.  Build and submit a new sitemap to Google and check that you have good PCI compliance type metrics in place, such as privacy page and a proper SSL.  If you are not accepting credit cards, shame on you, but… You do not need an SSL.  However, IF you are going to use one, DO NOT use a crappy shared SSL…

Starting an online business, specifically a shopping cart, has become a very popular thing to do recently. However, most new store owners are misguided in their thoughts of how the process works, make rash decisions and lack the essential understanding and research necessary to be successful in their new online business. This series of 5 posts is designed to serve as a guide for developing your own online store/shopping cart as painlessly and successfully as possible. Welcome to Part 4 Shop Necessities, Integration and Functionality!

So you want to be a Shop Owner Part 4

Every business will have specific integration or custom function they need or want.  This is the stickiest part of developing your online store.  In Part 1 of this series, we had you look at the saleability of you products, in doing so you probably came across some quirks or specific needs you have to effectively sell your wares. Whether its special information passed in orders on checkout, a specific sales report needed to manage your inventory or accounting, a software integration or a different payment method… You will need to accomplish these things to be successful.  A plan is only as good as the execution.

I sincerely hope you identified the custom features and integration you need and measured your shopping cart software against it by this stage of development… Lets assume you have =-)

Most developers will get $50 to $150 and hours to make customizations and functionality changes to your website.  If you have chosen a shopping cart that has packaged or developed modifications which you can install to change the functionality, look and feel then this cost is likely to be lessened quite a bit.  If you have need for all out custom programming, and it will increase your ability to sell products or rank better in organic search… Then make the investment.

We discussed early on some features that historically we know you will need to sell your products effectively and decrease abandonment.  Let dig in to a few of these things that shop owners commonly require from their shopping carts to succeed.

1. You will absolutely need a good search function for shoppers to find your products quickly and easily and reduce shopper frustration. You search function needs to be very near the top of your website, top left is optimum.  A search function is NO replacement for great navigation.
2. You will need a category menu to assist shoppers in navigating your products in a logical manner. While I can appreciate the desire to “stand out” or “be different” this menu is best suited on the top or top left.  Right hand menus just aren’t as effective, as we have long trained visitors to look in “normal” places for the menu options.  Does your menu need moved?
3. Does your store have the ability to properly apply sales tax in your region/state and any distributors zone as well?  There is no headache like the IRS if you do not handle your sales tax collection properly.
4. Is your coupon and discount functionality suited for your products or do you need additional tools like quantity pricing or special prices for special shoppers?  This is likely to be a job for your shopping cart developer.
5. Does your store and checkout contain language that leads shoppers to believe they “have to” create an account to shop with you?